Apple needs to stop trying to control what its customers do with their software and their machines. The more it tries, the more it loses. It is on a hiding to noplace, attempting to control things that are non of its business, and as far as one can see, purely for the sake of control. There is no discernible reason why people should not read the Kama Sutra on their phones, access EFF materials, or install their purchased copies of OSX on the machines of their choice.

Apple appears to be trying to control what they do simply for the sake of controlling them. Utterly misguided. Unfortunately, the only explanation of the existence of this behavior is a corporate culture that is deeply twisted, and fundamentally opposed to one of the key ingredients in Western intellectual freedom. That is where it becomes not simply ridiculous, but loathsome.

I find it rather ironic that the two biggest offenders in the current software market are both born of a country founded by Hackers (yes, the founding fathers where political hackers and some very much hardware hackers).

This article reminds me of the recent story where Apple banned a Nine Inch Nails app (which streams some of their music) because Apple objected to one of the songs - despite the fact that Apple themselves sell said song on their iTunes store.

iPhone is good on the hardware-side of things; it looks good, has a well-working and adequately sized touchscreen and all the bells and whistles you could imagine you'd need on a phone.

But the software side lacks. No support for MMS has already put off many people, and it's one of the reasons why I wouldn't buy iPhone. But also the Apple's tendency to try to limit and control the users is a good reason to avoid it. But when Linux is actually working well and fine on an iPhone it'll suddenly become every attractive to any homebrew dev, and will most likely very soon have every possible feature you could ask for, including MMS support. At that point I am all for an iPhone myself, too.

EDIT: Forgot to add that I don't suggest either GNOME or KDE4 for it without heavy modification. As a toolkit for the applications themselves Qt4 would be a good choice in that it is a lot easier to create fluid animations in Qt4 than GTK+, and on a small screen fluid, clear animations actually are useful for making it easier to see what's happening.

If MS had not dominated the software market then someone else or multiple other's would have braught about the home computer market. Apple would have been a strong contender also but we'd end up with a much more restrictive market and potentially more towards embedded software. Of course, the FOSS folks where a reaction to Unix so that variable would also exist still; potentially more would have been motivated to explore it earlier. Maybe Apple would have put out a Vista in the mid 90s rather than people being motivated by Vista in the last few years.

Every time this idea pops into someone's head, the variables that didn't exist in the previous time make it a whole new "what if" outcome.

There's an old saying, "I can't define pornography, but I know it when I see it."

That, effectively, is one of the drivers in terms of evaluation of an App on the iPhone.

If an App on the iPhone leads to "objectionable material", then that material may just as well be bundled in within the App itself. At a minimum, the application is a gateway to objectionable material.

Now it's easy to say "I can surf the most heinous sites on the internet on Safari on the iPhone, what's the difference?"

Simple, the difference is that Apple doesn't know or care what you surf, and, specifically, it hasn't SEEN what you surf.

But if you create an app that acts as a portal to "heinous material", then the app is effectively that heinous material, and Apple isn't going to let that application through.

Apple tested this app and "saw" questionable content. If Apple had not see this content, the App would have likely passed. Because later, if someone complained that "I ran this app from the iPhone and got terrible content", Apple could justifiably say "well, it wasn't there when we reviewed the applications." They have reasonable deniability about the content.

I guess what your saying is that when Apple tested the Safari browser, they did not go to Playboy.com and hence it pass the test. I guess the same logic would be true for their YouTube application also - during all their tests they never tested against material that could have 'offended' anyone.

Apple New/SameOld Moto: Your right to express depends on what we think of it.

But if you create an app that acts as a portal to "heinous material", then the app is effectively that heinous material, and Apple isn't going to let that application through.

Apple tested this app and "saw" questionable content. If Apple had not see this content, the App would have likely passed. Because later, if someone complained that "I ran this app from the iPhone and got terrible content", Apple could justifiably say "well, it wasn't there when we reviewed the applications." They have reasonable deniability about the content.

A: Apple changed their mind and unbanned the NIN app.

B: You really think someone is going to complain to Apple about "terrible content" from the EFF? You really think the EFF puts out content that is heinous and not worthy of being seen? OK fine you object to Downfall parodies. But srsly..

I watched the parody, and while I can't really claim to know why Apple considers it offensive, I can guess: f-bomb and p word (the latter of which alone can make a movie rated R in the U.S. if it's said like two or three times). Maybe that's why? Also, don't forget that Hitler isn't exactly a happy image, so most people don't have any urge to see or hear things about him. (And if you loved this, I guess that means you hated Valkyrie, heh.)